Feds Push Flier Background Checks

Ryan Singel
08.15.05

Just weeks after congressional investigators found that officials in charge of a new airline passenger-screening system violated a federal privacy law, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing Congress to reduce oversight of the program and to allow it to use commercial databases to screen for terrorists.

Changes proposed to next year's homeland security funding bill would allow the controversial Secure Flight program to use background checks and profiling to help determine if an airline passenger is a terrorist despite not being on a terror watch list.

Additionally, the proposed changes would permit Secure Flight to be rolled out to the nation's airports after Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff certifies the program will be effective and not overly invasive. The current bill requires independent congressional investigators to make that determination.

The Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, said in March that Secure Flight had yet to pass nine out of 10 tests required for certification.

A copy of the DHS proposal was provided to Wired News by an opponent of the plan familiar with the negotiations, who did so on condition of anonymity.

Democrats working on the homeland security bill confirmed that DHS was lobbying for the changes, and vowed to fight to keep the original language, which was worked out in conjunction with Republican leadership this spring.

"We are aware the department is shopping language that is weaker than the provision that Sen. Byrd had in the bill," said Jennifer Reed, a spokeswoman for West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minnesota), ranking member on the House's Homeland Security subcommittee, is also aware of the proposal and intends to fight hard to keep the original, more stringent Secure Flight provisions, according to a staffer.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) and Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Kentucky), who chair homeland security committees in the House and Senate and who worked with Byrd and Sabo on the original language, did not return repeated calls for comment.

Word of the DHS' efforts come just days after Chertoff dismissed privacy concerns about Secure Flight in a high-profile interview with USA Today.

However, Lee Tien, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney, was surprised to learn that Homeland Security officials were looking to loosen restrictions so soon after Secure Flight was found to have violated federal law by secretly collecting data on 250,000 Americans during its test phase.

"It boggles the mind that after you start with a strong position against commercial data and then you have the agency caught red-handed doing things it said it would not do -- that the GAO has said were unlawful -- then for Congress to say, 'Oh, that doesn't matter, in fact, you can do it some more if you explain it,'" Tien said. "That doesn't make any sense if you care about privacy."

CAPPS II, an earlier version of the Secure Flight project, was killed off in large part over criticism of the program's intention to profile and color-code passengers.

However, Justin Oberman, the head of Secure Flight, told the Associated Press in July that he eventually wanted to use commercial data to identify sleeper terrorists among the 1.4 million people who fly daily in the United States.

Homeland Security's proposal would let Secure Flight use commercial databases for that purpose, and to verify passengers' identities before their names are checked against the watch list, so long as Chertoff first "developed measures to determine the impact of such verification on aviation security."

A Homeland Security spokeswoman said she could not confirm that the department was pushing for changes.

Both the House and Senate passed next year's homeland security funding bill with identical provisions that prohibit Secure Flight from using commercial databases or using computer software to profile passengers, a reflection of congressional concern over the Transportation Security Administration's privacy scandals.

That would leave the congressionally mandated and long-delayed attempt to centralize the current airline-based passenger-screening program limited to checking passenger information against a unified and expanded terrorist watch list.

The restrictions were expected to be in the final bill sent to the president after the Senate and House conference members resolve significant differences over how much each state should get in homeland security grants, an effort that will continue after the August recess.

The TSA plans to test Secure Flight operationally using two airlines in the coming months and take over all commercial passenger screening in 2006.

Correction:

1A previous version of this story misidentified Rep. Martin Olav Sabo as the House Appropriations Committee's ranking member. Sabo serves as the ranking member on the House's Homeland Security subcommittee.
08.16.05